


The Victories of Pyrrhus

by gardnerhill



Series: A Study In Crimson [12]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirate, Community: watsons_woes, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, POV First Person, POV Jim Moriarty, Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 05:11:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2416163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No Disney movie is complete without the villain’s big musical number.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Victories of Pyrrhus

**Author's Note:**

> Created as a JWP 2014 prize for [](http://maestress83.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://maestress83.livejournal.com/)**maestress83** : "I will go with a fic from gardnerhill--I adore her A Study In Crimson series. I imagine Admiral Moriarty is enjoying the advantage he gained over Admiral Holmes, but surely he has heard of Shear-Lock's campaign of revenge by now. What's the Spider's next move? "

He is telling the truth. Everything in his body says that, in between the shrieks. I know every way a man can lie, and the lies that are spoken are the least of them.

 _Gold-Hand_ , is the name he screams. Gold-Hand, that night. A tall man strode the deck beside him, but death fell when that golden hand swung.

His foreman was one of those killed during that night, and the porters fled from the pirates. He also says that their new foreman saw our ship pull into dock, and disappeared without word nor gesture within the hour, as did many of the other porters; he was unfortunate enough to have been engaged aboard another ship lading cargo when Moran’s men found him. The arachnid carved into the prow near my flagship’s name is understood, even if these ignorant brutes cannot read nor write. That too is part of the story that has swept these seas like a hurricane – that those who die are marked with a crude spider carved into their heads or bodies. Anyone with a spider tattoo is suspect; a ship bearing a spider is even more a target for fear.

He has told me all he knows, the ignorant beast, and I will learn nothing more; but I have heard enough. The black’s hands are ruined for porter work now; I nod, and Moran slits his throat.

Only when I am topside do I succumb to the rage inside me; I snatch up the cat, limber and kept oiled with sailor’s blood, and bestride the deck striking every man who so much as hesitates or pauses in his work. Their cries of pain nearly drown out the splash as Captain Moran tosses the corpse to the sharks.

Once again, John Watson has robbed me of my victory.

***

My family name is a venerable one – which might lead one to the incorrect deduction that Moriartys are land-rich and money-poor, the situation among so many of the gentry. Money-poor the family is not, because Father exercised the same Christian benevolence upon his tenants as did his ancestors, and the same that he bestowed upon his sons; the old man is in Hell now, but residing in the most sumptuous suite amid the flames. Mother will join him soon, and will no doubt continue to turn a blind eye to the horrors perpetrated by demons upon their shrieking victims in exchange for her bed and board. James and I learned our lessons well, and were both fit to rule the estate; we would have been unforgettable, and unforgettably wealthy, working in tandem. That, however, James the elder would not tolerate. I, doubly-cursed by having both the greater brain and the latter birth, was dismissed at the age of seventeen with nothing resembling one-half of the inheritance.

I delighted in the horror I gave my mother and brother by attending University where I excelled in mathematics and physics, and then by joining the Royal Navy as an officer; both were scandalised at the thought of me studying as diligently as any penniless pedant, and then callusing my hands for my bread like a rustic. (I could have placated both with the truthful revelation that it was another way for a Moriarty to hold the whip over those who owe him, but their dismay was more satisfying.)

I chose the Navy, for that is where fortune lies these days for those of wit – not mere vulgar coin, but power and prestige as well. The islands of the South Seas may as well be the Sampo of Finnish legend for the wealth that spills inexhaustible from them – sugar, tobacco, coffee, tea, rum, indigo, cotton – and which is taken in as an equal flow of gold, gems, slaves, and fine goods for the owners of that wealth. Ships from England, France, Spain, Holland, Germany, America carry this wealth in both forms in and out. Enemy ships are fair targets, both for their cargo and their vessels to be added to England’s fleet, their men slain or pressed or ransomed. Capture enough ships and a Navy captain becomes an admiral, with a fleet and a share of the wealth he has captured for the Crown’s treasury, and the gratitude of Their Majesties; a mere sailor may walk as an equal among lords if he is made rich enough, so what might a Moriarty not accomplish with such royal favour? Given enough time to exercise my plans, I would have enough resources to sue my brother and bribe the Law for ownership of the estate, from there to use its income to spread my grasp even further.

Where there is a granary there are rats. Pirates teem in these seas, greedy for the goods in each hold, and the Crown sends the Navy ships like cats to devour them. There is a bounty on such men and such ships as well; a few hangings net a handful of motley vessels for the local governors, some working capital for greater endeavours, and a name that spreads fear in the slums of Montego and Tortuga. Most of these men are scum, not worth the length of Jamaican hemp their necks soil. But some are leopards among the rats – able, clever commanders and seamen who are adept at capturing treasure – and a Letter of Marque from the King and Queen transforms such men into hunting cats on royal leads sent coursing to pull down prey, their rogue ways winked at whilst they divert goods and gold both to London. Clever Naval commanders make themselves middle-men for such privateers and have their own pets among them to generate wealth. This, too, I would do.

So I went aboard my first ship, the _Asteroid_ , as a lieutenant under Captain Ambrose. I ruled those under me with the cat and those outside the ship with the sword. My best find in those days came when I allied with another lieutenant, a Sebastian Moran, who shared my nature but reveled in the vulgar minutiae of such work – happy to be paid with the promise of cruelty as well as money. The pair of us engaged in business aboard, bribing and blackmailing where needed, until I was named First Mate and Moran bos’n. It was I who found a clapped whore for the Captain’s leisure, which sent him to the sick-list with his own clap whilst I took a French merchanter and received the ship, the lion’s share of the prize and a captaincy of my own. Keeping my promise to Moran, I stepped aboard the merchanter, cannonaded and renamed _Spider,_ with him as my First Mate.

Now the _Spider_ was my estate, and I the undisputed lord; I practised upon my men the Christian benevolence I had learned so well from Father’s lessons, and would show my tenants when I acquired my rightful family holdings. I slew the rats and chased them from the granary (and if some of the grain fell into the Spider’s keeping it was well-earned for saving those fat merchanters’ necks); I hanged the crews of the _Palmer_ and the _Little Alice_ , and presented their captains’ boiled heads as proof for my bounty at Port Royal. I lost more men than was needed, demanding tribute from a Spanish freighter – she carried cannons bound for Trinidad’s fort, and used them on us.

In Port Royal I found and pressed my first privateer – Milverton, master of the _Octavius,_ and a ransomer. He did not want to share any of his wealth, but the coward agreed to all terms after Moran merely threatened one of his fingernails; I set a brace of my Spiders upon his ship with orders to see that the captain followed mine. His base greed for plain raw treasure proved very useful – as was his ability instantly to gauge a gentleman’s or lady’s value in ransom at a glance. I funneled information to him about which English ships carried wealthy and influential passengers, and let his nature take its course. His level of acquisition stepped up almost at once – which meant mine doubled.

Pleased with the results after the first year, I went to London with a load of treasure and goods – to find Admiral Holmes had outstripped my cargo’s value by a factor of three. The Admiral is most often in the Indian Ocean, but he too has a sole privateer under his aegis in the Caribbean seas, a single little barque that has gained the Crown a roomful of treasure and Holmes’ great favour with Their Majesties. Holmes refused to sell his interest in the privateer to me; he held nothing in his exemplary past with which to blackmail him, would not be bribed. The damned fellow wouldn’t even give me the captain’s name, nor the ship; I had to use my spies to learn that intelligence.

I took on more Navy men in London to replace the ones lost to the Spanish assault, including a surgeon. And here began my troubles.

A ship’s surgeon is a low creature, little more than a London barber who reeks of rum rather than gin, a sail-master who sews wounds and a carpenter who saws limbs, a butcher drenched in men’s blood instead of pig’s. His duty is to lop off ruined arms and legs, get the men upright and fighting again, and stay silent when the captain gives orders to the crew. But this insolent leech _confronted_ me, continually, as if he were the quartermaster on a privateer vessel presenting a petition from the men. He called me “Captain” and “Sir” but with no deference in his tone. When I disciplined the men he gainsaid my orders, pleaded for mercy as my mother never had, had the audacity to quote Scripture to support his soft-headedness. But there is one God in Heaven and there is one master on the _Spider;_ I was the law on this ship, not Dr. John Watson.

I soon perceived that a soft heart rather than a drunken head was John Watson’s great weakness, and that was how I finally silenced the cur; I chose three men at random and flogged them bloody before his eyes as a punishment for his ready tongue. It worked better than I had hoped. He shouted over the cries of the whipped men, he cursed me in an attempt to turn my wrath upon his person instead. But then the idiot actually dashed in between Moran and his target, unarmed and in his shirt-sleeves from tending the first man, in an attempt to wrest the cat away – and received some well-earned stripes of his own before the other salts pulled him away and held him until the third man had painted the deck. Dr. Watson was silent and compliant after that, his mouth like an oyster-shell under his moustache; but something burned in his eyes that was not the sullen bovine hatred I expected to see. Moran kept a weather-eye on him; loose casks of powder are not to be ignored.

The seas were rough the day I espied the French frigate _Cemetarie des Empires_. I had no idea how rough they truly were, until we had fired on them and were full-on engaged. I was almost ecstatic, on top of the battle-lust in my blood as they returned fire and we responded. This was a beautiful ship that would be part of my fleet, loaded with goods and men to be made into more of my chattel and sailors, a worthy craft for Moran to stride in his first command under me… But our cannon-fire became sparser and sparser, whilst the French continued heavy firing; I roared for more shots – to be told by the lieutenant that nearly half the big guns were unmanned, and the crewman that had been wounded had disappeared. And then Moran charged up to me, his gashed arm bleeding, and screamed that the men had deserted, fled in an open boat made ready for such an escape, and Dr. Watson had organised it and timed it so that they could put distance between themselves and the Spider whilst we were heavily engaged and our attention away. I stared at the French ship – _my_ French ship – as it continued to fire at an ever-more-silent _Spider_. There was nothing for it, if the _Spider_ was to survive. I ordered the remaining men to fire pots of sulphur and pitch into _Cemetarie_ ; those caught in the sails and hull, and the ship burned and sank with all its goods and many of the screaming men, some of them set aflame by the missiles. We captured as many of the drowning sailors as we could to re-crew our ranks; but the damage was done. Our rudder had been smashed and until repairs were made we would go nowhere – not before the traitor and his pack of mutineers were beyond the horizon.

I had Moran flog every Frenchman brought aboard until their screams drowned out the rage inside my mind. My victory, my prize, my beginnings of a fleet – destroyed by that back-talking, mutinous saw-bones. My one consolation was knowing that an open boat in these seas was a death sentence for all but one in a hundred; they would not have enough water, food, or canvas for the amount of men aboard, and if they’d been wounded they would die all the faster – not the traitor’s executions they deserved, but starvation, thirst, and gangrene. They might even turn on their savior and tear him to pieces for their plight. That alone would bring me sorrow – the thought that John Watson might die before I got my hands on him in the future.

Repairs made, I made my report at Port Royal and listed every deserter as mutineer. With the report I sent a petition to the Crown to provide a reward for the capture of John Watson, who merited the full treatment meted out to rebellious Scots, heretics and traitors. I now had three lofty goals; own the Caribbean, acquire Admiral Holmes’ gold-making barque, and see John Watson hanged, drawn and quartered.

I did not yet have my fleet of ships, but spies I had enough – my miserable handful of the family fortune, eked out with what I collected from Milverton, was good for that much. I now sent word for them to look for the deserters, especially Watson, whose reward would provide me with more capital and whose death would provide me with satisfaction. I pressed more men in the meantime, including several of the weaker French prisoners – a cat-o-nine-tails at one end and a grog tankard at the other will make an adequate sailor of any refuse.

I began to hear of a sea-witch who commanded the brig _King of Bohemia_ in place of the late Captain Von Kramm – known as The Adder or simply The Woman. Her strikes were as surgical as they were merciless, leaving no survivors and only her men boasting of their cruelty and wealth. Vicious and violent; should I be able to coax her to privateer for me I would be able to command via fear and dread as well as greed.

As I robbed smaller ships and demanded payment for escorting larger ones and sought another privateer to hitch to my chariot, one of my ears in Trinidad brought word of a Dutch sailor who’d complained about his ship’s robbery by English pirates, but who had had a _doktor_ among their ranks who’d actually bandaged him after their attack. The news that John Watson lived, and he was on the _Baker_ , made me spend two hours in my cabin praying my thanks for this miracle; two coneys in the one snare. I sent orders to Milverton to lie in wait at Port Royal, for the privateer must report there before either ferrying the treasure to London or seeing it aboard a London-bound Navy ship. When he was assured of the _Baker_ , he was to notify me.

I found weeks of Navy business to attend to in Jamaica, safely tucked into Refuge Cay – transferring crewmembers, taking messages from my spies, careening the hull. What a glorious morning when the macaw arrived with a scream and Milverton’s message on its leg, announcing the _Baker_ ’s arrival! I sent the bird back with my orders: Milverton was to drop anchor within hailing distance of the barque. And then he was to set fuses to three powder kegs on the _Octavius_. Knowing how the whining creature would pule at the loss of his ship, I promised him the _Baker_ in addition to the gold, as a mother promises a sweet to a screaming child before she gives him a sound whipping instead.

It worked. John Watson – who’d taken advantage of an occupied, distressed ship to strike a blow against his lawful captain – was taken captive in the same fashion. Soft-hearted surgeon that he was, unable to turn a deaf ear to the screams of wounded and dying men, he sailed into my trap and my operatives took him without incident. The fear on his face when he recognized us both, myself and Moran, was delicious.

Moran had his orders from me as well. He knew a hundred ways to make a man shriek out his innermost heart, but I told him to focus on the doctor’s hands. There would be enough left of him to keep alive all the way to Newgate; Watson could spend the voyage staring at his useless stumps and knowing that nothing, not even a last-minute royal pardon, would make him a doctor ever again.

But as the questioning went on, rage consumed me once again. Watson was bound, shrieking in pain as Moran expertly peeled off his left hand a nail and finger-joint at a time – and all he need do to stop it was tell me the Baker’s berth, and give up his new captain. But he would not. This Shear-Lock, this pirate scum, had gained Watson’s loyalty where I had not. His defiance once again took away what should have been my triumph.

I was so engrossed in the work, so consumed by fury, that Shear-Lock himself was upon me before I’d so much as turned fully around in that dank interrogation cell – and then all I knew was a lightning-flash of pain, and blood in my eyes, and the need only to flee before the screaming berserker who had boarded the _Spider_ without my knowledge. By the time the men engaged the pirates and all hands were on deck John Watson was gone, carried away by the pack of curs like a hero surrounded by his rescue party, and their boat was away – one boat, a handful of Shear-Lock’s dogs, and I was thwarted. We harried them for days but got neither _Baker_ nor Watson back. I screamed louder than my captive had, the morning I knew we had lost our quarry.

I did not trust this intelligence to a courier; I turned the _Spider_ to London to report on Shear-Lock’s betrayal of the Crown (both in sheltering traitor John Watson and in boarding a Royal Navy vessel as an enemy), and that said traitor Watson was to be found aboard the _Baker_ , further proof of Shear-Lock’s treachery. When I left London I was an Admiral and Shear-Lock was officially denounced as a pirate, a privateer no longer – and Admiral Holmes was sent a summons to return to London to face the Crown for this. I carried a generous loan from Their Majesties in aid of my promise to provide two traitors from the one ship. Two other ships sailed under my flag, the _Tiger_ under the newly-captained Moran and the _Wasp_ by Milverton (in lieu of the promised _Baker_ ); I now turned my thoughts to the _King of Bohemia_ and her new captain, a bloodthirsty wench happy to disprove the softness of her sex through sheer brutality. This, I thought, was how one defeated pirates – not with cutlass and cannon, but with intrigue and court favour. Engulf them; gain a fleet to swallow other ships and make them mine. Soon, soon I would swallow the _Baker_.

I preened too soon.

I return to my waters in triumph, laden with title and royal gratitude and treasury marque – and find a phantom stalking me.

From the Caymans to Barbados, the very sight of the spider painted on my hull or mention of the _Octavius_ sends tars flying in fear or crossing themselves. Not a captain will parlay with me, nor sell himself and his ship to me, not for the most ridiculous sums. _Gold-Hand_ , they said – or _Orlamain_ or _El Manodoro_. Gold-Hand will find out and they too will be marked men.

Former _Octavius_ men are disappearing, or being found dangling and mutilated, with my spider hacked in their foreheads to bray their allegiance and their blood-money in their mouths to pay the Devil. Gold-hand has curst the men of that ship and they may not escape, say the whispers. This Gold-Hand is in turns a ruthless sea-captain, a ghost, or a vengeful tar who’s sold his soul to Lucifer to find his lost hand. Men who face nonstop hardship and death from real peril on the seas shake in fear at the mention of this chimaera.

It’s even unsafe for a buccaneer to wear too much gold jewelry – one treasure-proud fellow named Skylights was beaten to death by a panicked mob in a Trinidad slop-house for wearing a dozen gold rings and bracelets on his right arm and hand.

I traced the stories to their earliest source, made my way to that island port, and seized the most frightened-looking dock-hand for questioning.

Even as I flogged my men afterward, my mind tumbled over what I had learned. So: John Watson has replaced the hand Moran destroyed with a gold one, and between him and Shear-Lock and the rest of their cut-throats they have conjured up a vengeance tale to spread in dockside taverns and whorehouses via their striking of all survivors – an unwonted bloodthirstiness from the _Baker_ ’s master. The result is that I may pour gold in a river before privateers and they will not touch a clipped copper of it. Once again, John Watson has robbed me of my victory.

***

Under both eyes I now carry the scar from Shear-Lock’s cutlass, and will bear to my grave the proof of the folly of being led by one’s emotions instead of harnessing them. All three of us had been turned wrong by them – Watson, in being taken in custody by my trap; I, in being so rapt by a chance for revenge that an enemy boarded me without my awareness and stole back my prey. But Shear-Lock will suffer most for his turn-coat loyalty to a traitor; he has gifted me with the knowledge of another soft heart to be bent to my will.

Shear-Lock is hunting down the _Octavius_ men who survived the blast, and making gruesome examples of them to those who would take my shilling. What one man can do another can do. So I will press The Woman – cover her vast black arse in gold if need be – and have her lay waste all of Shear-Lock’s strikes like a hyaena following a lion. With the speed that gossip travels, Shear-Lock should soon bear all the blame for every one of the Adder’s kills; it will be much easier for most to believe a man rather than a woman could be so ruthless. Since the Woman destroys all comers – English as well as French or Dutch – word will return to London of Shear-Lock’s savagery now that he is no longer on Their Majesties’ chain. Up will rise the reward (and down goes Admiral Holmes’ favour and esteem), until the prize is so great that everything in the South Seas that floats will be after the _Baker_ – with explicit orders to take the captain and the ship’s surgeon alive and bring them to me, and a very large prize for presenting the Baker in a mendable condition. Loyalty among the pirate scum has the longevity of a snowball in this weather, and is based entirely upon gold.

The torque tightens around Milverton, who sails through it blind. His men will know, of course – sailors talk – but the _Wasp_ ’s master will flog their mouths closed as usual. I am not so stupid; I have ears at the scuttlebutt. If my privateer cannot keep himself safe from Shear-Lock’s vengeance, I would need to replace him anyway. If captains will not be bribed, they will be blackmailed or pressed; if they will not take the tankard of grog, there still remains the cat.

I will send a ship full of sea-rats to the gallows, and hang a gold hand at my prow to show all with whom I parlay that I have destroyed the phantom that pursued me; I may resume my ascent once my gold is good again. I will gain my rightful place in court and see Holmes disgraced and exiled, if not banished. There will come a time when every coin and every item of value in the South Seas must pass through me. All I have is aimed at my goal and it shall not be moved – not for expediency, not for one with fewer brains and holdings than I, not for a slyer fox, and not for a mere surgeon who oversteps his place before God and man.

In the meantime I comfort myself with plans for the voyage back to London when I have my two prisoners. Moran is infinitely obliged to me. He will not be allowed to finish Watson’s death - that will be for the deft and clever hands of Newgate’s best entrailer. But Watson has one untouched hand, and I have promised it to Moran; it will keep the man entertained during our voyage back to London with our prisoners.

And I shall make Shear-Lock watch.


End file.
